Angels in the Outfield

We are off the Girls' Camp this morning. The Girl is a 4th Year this year. And is very excited, but still insisted on going to swim practice before meeting at the church for the ride to camp. She has 15 minutes between one and the other. Oh, to be that young and carefree. Anyhooo.

It has been a very stressful week preparing for camp. Looking at the pile of stuff in the front room this morning that I need to bring, you'd think I was going to be gone for weeks--not 5 days. I think I took less stuff for Trek last summer. But that is how it always seems to go.

As the stress was accumulating and I was getting more and more frustrated, I began to think that maybe this whole Girls' Camp regimen was overrated and I should just stay home. I jumped on the computer to waste time and avoid/ignore my life for a minute.

I mindlessly clicked on Facebook, the funnest waste of time on the Internet, and
it showed me that I had one message waiting. Oooh. That is less common a FB occurrence for me, so that was fun. I clicked on it, of course.

There was a message from a girl I haven't seen or hardly thought of in twenty years. Andera was a girl at Camp Ritchie, my home Girls' Camp in California, one year when my friend Heidi and I were Fourth Year cabin counselors.

With us single and in college, the camp ladies of my home stake always gave Heidi and me that group because at hte time the Adventurers when backpacking for 5 days & 4 nights and the "grown ups" didn't want to take that assignment. Heidi and I loved those girls. We loved taking them out and getting to do our own thing with them. Andera was one of our "girls" in 1989 or 1990.

She wrote that I didn't need to remember her but that I had been her cabin counselor that year and at the time, unbeknownst to us, she had been having a really hard summer when we got her. She wrote that she was facing some personal choices that had to do with her own faith and testimony, whether or not Girls' Camp was worth it for her, or if any of it really mattered. You know, the stuff more 15 or 16 years old go through at some point.

She wrote that she appreciated all that Heidi and I did to make the environment and mood of camp so fun and enjoyable for the girls, for her. With us, she felt we wanted her there and she knew we loved her as part of that group.

Then she wrote that that one week with us backpacking along the spine of the Sierra Nevada's made the difference for her. She decided that the Gospel was a good thing and it could make her happy if she followed it. She recognized that she was worthy of being happy and remembered again the way to achieve that kind of lasting happiness. She thanks me for caring and giving my time to serve as a counselor at camp.

Well. There you have it.

This is why I am going to Girl's amp again this morning. Girls' Camp has long been the place where I believe young women gain their testimonies. Testimonies of Jesus Christ as our Savior are strengthened and deepened as the girls experience life in nature, trying things they don't usually do, with people who love them outside of their families.

That is why I go. That is why I stress myself out and pack too much junk and over prepare with treats and skits and games and songs.

For reasons like Andera's; for girls just like Andera and all the other young women I have had the privilege of serving over the past twenty three or so years. I really wouldn't have it any other way.